Recently, one of my fintech students (Nadiyah Syahira Nordin) wrote a really nice article about Cryptocurrency From Shariah Perspective.
I thought I will share it with you. You can find the paper in the IIiBF website and the paper .

Abstract

Cryptocurrency is seen to create a new phenomenon to the landscape of financial services
industry. It has gained attention in attracting all relevant players in the industry to delve
deeper into the issue. Preceding bitcoin as the inaugural prevalent product, cryptocurrency
has been utilized as the medium of payment in various sectors. Owing to that factor, it is
conceivable why it is taken as a new phenomenon. Islamic finance, being an integral part of
financial industry, also concerned about this new emergence. The usage of cryptocurrency
penetrated Islamic finance through the introduction of Mudharabah-based offering for small
enterprises by Blossom Finance. Owing to this observance, this calls for an academic
approach of cryptocurrency analysis from Shariah perspective. This is due to the reason that
practices in Islamic finance without proper Shariah deliberation may run the risk of noncompliance.
This research sought to identify the concept of cryptocurrency from its features and process.
The technical features comprising of validating mechanism, mathematical algorithm and coins supply are analysed in the context of the fulfilment
of currency prerequisites from Shariah perspective.

There will be a big forum coming soon organized by Association of Shariah Advisors in Islamic Finance (ASAS), Association of Islamic Banking Institution Malaysia (AIBIM), Malaysian Takaful Association, International Shariah Research Academy for Islamic Finance (ISRA), and IIUM International Islamic Banking and Finance (IIiBF). The event is called the Shariah Fintech Forum 2017 and will be a 2 day event on 7th and 8th November, 2017. We have all the big names sharing their experience, new regulations, market trends and research findings in fintech and shariah. Some are famous speakers who are experts in their area and some are new names in the area sharing research findings. So don't wait any longer, register this event. Download the form and reserve your seats before its sold out.

Below is a list of speakers in the 2 day forum :

Industry

Azleena Idris (General Counsel and Head of Legal) of Kuwait Finance House (Malaysia) Berhad on (Overview of Fintech)

They are many concerns about bitcoin and most cryptocurrencies. On one hand there are a lot of criminals who like it because it is anonymous. Illegal trades can be easily conducted and we have seen this before where the mode of payments for WannaCry Ransomware used bitcoin as a mode of Ransom payment1. But there are a lot of other criminals out there as well. The types that take advantage of other people's greed and gullibility. Creating getting rich schemes such masquerading as a investment fund manager. Often times, people lose a whole lot of money in this scams and unregulated investment firms.2. However, that does not mean it is totally anonymous3. While there is a way to find these perpetrators, the authorities should now be smart and start monitoring illegal activities better.

On the other hand, the distributed nature of bitcoin makes it desirable for it to be used as a backend system that is both reliable and fault tolerant. However, there is also doubts about it to be totally scalable4. This articles shares some links about arguments made on these two issues.

When working in the fintech area you have to worry about regulators, for many reasons. Based on literature, history tells us that the electronic money was earlier started by 3 major companies, Paypal, E-gold and Liberty Reserve. These technologies was very desruptive and changed how businesses are run today. However, only paypal managed to prosper. The main reason is mainly because of Paypal willingness to work with regulators. While the others became the source of crime related business activities and slowly become irrelevant as they fail to get support from governments and legal businesses.

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Words of CS Wisdom

A SQL query goes into a bar, walks up to two tables and asks, "Can I join you?" "Yes, naturally", said the first table. Then SQL tries his luck and said to the second table, "Do you join both ways?".iThe second table replies, "No, but you can enjoy the view!"